Media

Over the Wall

Categories

Available for download is the draft resolution, in Arabic and English, to accord to Palestine an observer state status in the United Nations system. This draft has been circulated to member states at the UN but not yet officially tabled. It is believed the resolution will be put for a vote at the UN General Assembly later this month.

We sincerely hope Australia, which has played a major role in 1947 and 1948 for the creation of Israel in Palestine, resulting in the ethnic cleansing and destruction of Palestine, will take this opportunity to be on the right side of history and live up to the trust the international community has given it recently in winning a seat on the United Nations Security Council, to be a good global citizen, to provide leadership for a better world and to shoulder its historic and moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people by supporting the resolution and playing an active role at the UN.

APAN (Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network) have established an online petition at http://www.communityrun.org/p/YES-Palestine . The petition text is the short italicised paragraph at the start, with the rest an explanatory note for potential signatories. Please sign yourself, and then circulate this link widely amongst your networks. If you would like a paper based petition, click here to download printable version, with signatures to be received by 12th November. This petition referred to the government of the day and is now obsolete.

We would also encourage everyone to also write to the Foreign Minister directly about this. Letters always carry much more weight than signatures on a petition, and do not need to be long or detailed. Letters can be e-mailed to foreignminister.carr@dfat.gov.au.

APAN will seek to meet with Senator Carr in mid-November to present the petition and discuss the case for voting YES. We will also be contacting politicians who have expressed support for Palestine to do whatever they can to support this. If you have any relationships with politicians, we’d ask you to make contact with them and ask them to also act in support.

The Palestinian leadership has started a process to seek a status as a non-member state in the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA). It is expected to ask the GA members to vote on a draft resolution at the last week of November, may be at the upcoming anniversary of the UN Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People on November 29.

The anticipated draft resolution will be very simple illustrating the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination including their right to establish an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.